Meeting Public Comments

Dustin Hinrichs []

This proposed change to the definition of home food product is unfair for existing restauranteurs and owners of retail foodservice businesses. These businesses are required to meet much more stringent standards than these types of homebased businesses will be required to meet. Imagine being a sandwich or burger shop that has had to invest thousands of dollars in equipment, training, licensing, etc. and now should this proposed change go through the homes in close proximity to your restaurant can now begin offering sandwiches or burgers at lower prices and with virtually NO overhead. These residences will not be required to have a ventilation system or fire suppression system, they will not be required to have grease traps, they will not even be required to have dedicated handwashing or dishwashing sinks like restaurants all must have. What happens when that burger place operating from a house clogs up the city's sewer system due to producing way more grease than a residence would typically do? Is the business on the hook for that repair work? No, they're not. The taxpayers of the City will be. It's not a fair proposal.Additionally, this will put the public in harmsway by essentially rolling back our food safety approach in the State of Iowa to where it was prior to using the FDA Food Code a sciencebased approach that contains hundreds of regulations that were written and enacted specifically to protect the public from illness and disease based on real human experiences where people were injured or killed resulting from poor food production practices. If we have the benefit of scientific understanding why on earth would we stick our heads in the sand and pretend like the past 100+ years of knowledge and experience never happened. It's not a safe proposal.If you all in Des Moines continue to erode scientific principles and ignore reality you'll not only harm people via foodborne illnesses or other diseases but you'll also continue to lose logical, thoughtful, and productive Iowans to states that actually embrace science, experiential learning, and progress.Please do not vote to move this definition change forward. It's irresponsible for the reasons I have stated.